Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff arrived in Haiti Wednesday for talks on economic ties and immigration after a visit to Cuba where she signed trade deals and met revolutionary icon Fidel Castro.

Rousseff was greeted in Port-au-Prince by Haitian President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Garry Conille.

A large banner at the airport read "Welcome to Our Home."

The leaders left immediately for the presidential palace for talks, expected to focus on Brazil's efforts to deal with Haitian refugees arriving in the South American nation since a devastating January 2010 earthquake.

On Monday Brazil announced that it had allocated more than $500,000 to help the more than 4,000 Haitian immigrants who are being granted permanent residency.

The northern Brazilian states of Acre and Amazonas which border Peru have seen an influx of undocumented Haitians since the quake, which left 15 percent of Haiti's entire population of almost 10 million either killed or displaced.

Brazil also leads the military component of the UN mission in Haiti.

In Cuba, Rousseff, a former leftist rebel who now leads Latin America's largest economy, held talks with her Cuban counterpart Raul Castro and also called on the president's brother and predecessor, 85-year-old Fidel Castro.

Brazil's first woman president signed agreements to create a geological data bank, bolster the metallurgy ministry's technology and quality center and set up a network of human milk banks.

Under the deals, Brazil is to send experts to oversee implementation of the projects and to train Cuban specialists in Brazil.

Rousseff also toured Mariel, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Havana, where Brazil has earmarked $450 million to finance expansion of port facilities.

Bilateral trade reached a record $642 million in 2011, making Brazil Cuba's second largest Latin American trading partner, after Venezuela.

But Brazilian exports to Cuba account for $550 million of the trade, an imbalance that both sides want to correct.

On Tuesday Rousseff refused to criticize Cuba's human rights record, saying the issue should not be used to score ideological points.

"One should sweep one's own house before criticizing others. We in Brazil also have (human rights problems). So I am willing to discuss human rights from a multilateral perspective," she told reporters.